Thomas Breen file photo
Board of Ed member Darnell Goldson: "First, one of our schools was shut down due to a lack of proper maintenance of the HVAC system, now our seventh and eighth grade classes are being dismantled. What's next?"
A shortage of teachers at Brennan-Rogers School has led the city’s public school district to recommend that families transfer 7th and 8th graders out of the West Rock magnet school and to another New Haven public school that has more educators on staff.
New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) spokesperson Justin Harmon confirmed that student transfer plan in a Monday afternoon email comment sent to the Independent.
“The district is offering parents of 7th and 8th graders at Brennan-Rogers the opportunity to move their students to other NHPS schools where there are teachers,” Harmon wrote. “Currently at Brennan-Rogers, there are four vacancies among the five core teaching positions for the two grades. We believe that the course of action that will deliver the best academic outcomes for our students will be to transfer them.”
Harmon said that Brennan-Rogers parents are not required to transfer their 7th and 8th grade students out of the Wilmot Road school. Those students can choose to stay if they’d like to finish out the school year that started in late August and that runs through next June.
“Any students who continue at Brennan-Rogers will remain in good standing,” Harmon wrote. Asked if students who stay at the school will risk losing credits necessary to graduate, Harmon said that the district does not assign credits for pre‑K through 8th grade classes.
Harmon added that the district does not yet know how many of the 52 students currently in the 7th and 8th grades at Brennan-Rogers will choose to transfer and how many will choose to remain.
“The Office of School Choice and Enrollment is working with families individually to develop options for their students,” he said.
When does he expect these student transfers to take place?
“We are hoping to make as many of the transfers as possible after Thanksgiving. We will work with families if they need more time,” Harmon replied.
And what is the plan for those students who choose to stay at a school with so few educators?
“The plan for any remaining students will depend, in part, on how many there are, and how we can best deploy the available teaching resources. (The resources are tight, which is why we raised the possibility of transfers.)”
The teacher-vacancy-induced student transfer plan for Brennan-Rogers comes nearly two years after the district permanently shuttered another far west side school, West Rock STREAM Academy, because of concerns about the age and condition of the decades-old school building. It also comes a week after the Board of Education signed off on a new teachers union contract that, if approved by the full Board of Alders, would see local public school educators get a nearly 15 percent pay hike over the next three years in a bid to stem the flow of teachers out of New Haven.
What's Next For West Rock?
Thomas Breen file photo
West Rock Alder Honda Smith.
Board of Education member Darnell Goldson first brought this Brennan-Rogers School transfer plan to broader public light in emails he sent to NHPS Supt. Iline Tracey over the weekend.
He told the superintendent in a Saturday email that he had heard rumors “over the last few days that in the very near future” Brennan-Rogers School students are “going to be relocated to schools throughout the district.”
Is this true? Goldson asked. If so, why, and how will this plan be communicated to students, parents and staff?
“There is some truth to the rumor,” Tracey replied in a Sunday morning email. She said that the students are not being relocated. Rather, “parents are given the opportunity to place their 7th and 8th graders in other schools for instructional purposes due to a lack of teachers. They can say yes or no to the opportunity. Meetings have been convened and executed with families.”
In a subsequent email on Sunday, Goldson thanked Tracey for the info — and followed up with a host of other questions related to the transfer plan. He criticized the district for making “such a major move” without first providing notice to the Board of Education. (In a Monday afternoon email to the Independent, Dr. Tracey disputed this criticism, saying that she did notify the Ed board members “via group text message” about the Brennan-Rogers situation.)
“It is concerning to me that the West Rock neighborhood has been the subject of changes based on deficiencies in our school system. One of our schools (West Rock) was closed because of a lack of maintenance on the HVAC system,” Goldson continued in his Sunday email. “Now another school (Brennan-Rogers) is having two classes of students transferred in the middle of the school year for lack of staffing. An example of questions I will have — how was it decided that teachers would be assigned to one school and not another, leaving not one but two classes in one school teacherless? Is this occurring in other schools?”
In response to a Monday afternoon request for comment for this article, Goldson hit on those same concerns in an email sent to the Independent. “The lack of transparency and communication to the board is concerning to me and should be to all board members,” he wrote. “Additionally, West Rock seems to be the community which is the last to receive the resources needed when it comes to education services. First, one of our schools was shut down due to a lack of proper maintenance of the HVAC system, now our seventh and eighth grade classes are being dismantled. What’s next?”
Paul Bass File Photo
Teachers union Prez Leslie Blatteau.
In a separate phone interview with the Independent on Monday, West Rock Alder Honda Smith said she was reassured to hear that students who choose to stay at Brennan-Rogers will still be able to advance to the next grade level.
“I wanted to make sure that it didn’t affect them from moving from one grade to the other,” she said. “I’m going to wait and see if any parents have any other concerns, and let’s see how far the Board of Education gets with this. … Parents do have the opportunity to stay or choose another school. I think it’s great they were given the opportunity to do so.”
She said she hasn’t yet heard any concerns from Brennan-Rogers parents about this transfer plan. She promised to keep talking with parents and neighbors about the plan, and urged any parents with concerns to reach out to her.
City teachers union President Leslie Blatteau told the Independent in a Monday afternoon phone interview that this student transfer plan and the teacher vacancies that sparked it highlight “the inequalities that exist” among schools in Connecticut, as well as among schools across New Haven.
West Rock already lost a school recently with the closure of West Rock STREAM Academy, she said. “Brennan-Rogers is a school that needs a lot of resources. It makes it hard to attract certified teachers to a school that continues to need resources.”
She said the district and educators and everyone invested in New Haven’s public schools need to be “much more intentional, creative, and willing to push to get the resources to schools that need them.”
“There is a sense of loss associated with having to leave a school” before the end of a school year, she continued. “I’m really hoping we can work collaboratively with central office to make sure that supports are in place” for both the academic and social-emotional needs of those who choose to leave Brennan-Rogers for another NHPS school, as well as for those who choose to stay.
“We’re going to work to support the teachers and the support staff at Brennan-Rogers so they can keep doing the jobs they want to do,” she pledged. And, she said, “we have to be willing to have the conversations about why people are leaving. If we have to address working conditions and learning conditions” to get teachers to come to or stay at Brennan-Rogers, “let’s do it.”
The BOE needs to do an audit of all openings at all schools in all subjects. I have heard there are many schools missing teachers in core subject areas. The BOE needs to walk around and see what a teacher less district we have in some places right now and how that impacts student and staff morale.
Also, if students transfer where are they going? Are we now overcrowding already tough middle school classrooms in the district which need the most SEL support with more students? How will that impact the locations students are going to?
Is it possible to pull some teaching coaches or other administrators that do not work directly with students to these empty classrooms so students can at least finish out the year at their homeschool?
This just seems all around sad for the students, students who have already experienced so much academic turmoil as a result of the pandemic.